Sara,
When Sofia and I met, you and I were just finishing up work on Love You To Death in Los Angeles. It was 2016 and I was renting a place downtown in the Arts District, living alone for the first time in years. I knew instantly there was something about Sofia that was special. And since I had eight months at home, it provided time to get to know Sofia at a “normal” pace and enjoy being in a new relationship before we set off on tour.
In the past when I’ve met people I’m interested in dating, the timing hasn’t been great. Neither has my geography. Sometimes we’ve lived in different cities, often I’m on tour or releasing a new album and about to go on tour. Sometimes all three. It doesn’t make it easy. Being away while you’re falling in love adds franticness to an already intoxicating experience of getting to know someone new. You rush. It feels like you can’t take space or take your time because you don’t have any time, and soon you’ll have too much space. But with Sofia we had time. A lot of it. We had our own spaces, our own friends. She had a job she was busy with, we could take a night off, date properly, and have balance as we got to know one another.
But looming on the horizon was the Love You To Death album release and subsequent tour you and I had committed to. Inevitably Sofia and I talked about if she would come on tour. I was honest about the realities of tour life. As you and I both know too well, the road is no place for girlfriends. It’s boring, the days are long, the travel can be arduous and exhausting, and there’s no personal time or personal space to speak of. It can inspire guilt to have someone come to visit, especially a partner. There just isn’t a lot of time for hanging out. Plus, sleeping on a tour bus in a single bunk is nearly impossible for two adult-sized humans, so even when a girlfriend has come to visit, I often sleep alone. While the tour buses you and I travel on are nice, it’s still shared accommodations. Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful we grew large enough as a band to justify a second bus so we could split our party in two: cohabitating with six adults is easier than twelve. But one bus or two — you’re still sharing space. It’s hard to escape, to find a moment to yourself. It’s hard to connect to a girlfriend while you group live with your workmates and identical twin sister.
Back in the van days, we got hotel rooms: two hundred square feet to shed the days' weight, to phone home and gossip and vent and cry in privacy. After we transitioned into a tour bus from a van, I wondered if the van wasn’t better. Now, I’d still trade the privacy of a hotel for the ability to lay down on long drives. Seven years straight of travelling in the van, and sleeping away the hours sitting up, did a number on my lower back and neck. But I told Sofia all of this when we started dating. My stories of past girlfriends visiting tour came out like warnings. She looked less and less interested in the prospect of coming on tour to visit me the more I unravelled the truth. A lot of people think touring is all partying and fun. Rockstars stay up late, sleep late, and party 24/7. Sadly, this is not the case with us. You and I have never really been partyers. We’re rigid, pragmatic, Virgos, we tell everyone who comes to work for us. We have a lot of rules. No drinking on stage. No drinking before we play. For the crew, no drinking until the show is loaded out and buses depart. Shoes off on the bus. No drugs. No hard liquor on the bus. Put the seat down, put your bag away, no changing in the bus hallway.
But the real issue with girlfriends or friends visiting is that people from home always wanted to explore or see things. Girlfriends wanted date nights or alone time in a hotel. They wanted to reconnect. But all of that is hard to come by. An average day on one of our tours is spent waking up in a parking lot of some random city, being shuttled to a hotel to shower, then on to interviews and meet and greets and soundcheck. The few hours of quiet time after that are often spent in silence recuperating and preparing to play the show. I don’t know if you told Stacy all of this before she came on tour the first time but when I finished telling Sofia, she said she might skip the Love You To Death tour and just take me on vacation after. Dream girl.
But when Love You To Death came out and we started to prepare, I wanted Sofia to come to visit, to see it for herself. She agreed to visit for three days, two of which we’d be in a hotel, stationery. I figured this was a gentle, kind, humane way to introduce Sofia to the customs of a Tegan and Sara tour. And it worked. She found the shows exhilarating, she likes technical stuff, the behind-the-scenes, and poured over details like how many road cases we had, how they fit in the trailer, and what everyone on the road team did for the tour. One of the days we were in Tulsa. We got wood-fired Pizza and went to a museum. She bought a shirt that said Tulsa on it. She loved it there.
Backstage at the show, a local cat rescue dropped off kittens for the afternoon for us to play with. Sofia teased me that life on the road was a little more rockstar than I’d let on.
She was left with a good feeling about tour. But she mostly kept up her promise not to come on tour and instead take me on a vacation every time I got home from tour. And I honestly liked that a lot. It was my preference and always has been to keep work and personal separate to some degree. I’m not always my best on tour. I’m tired, ornery, busy. That’s not who I am with Sofia. Ever. So I think part of me worried that it might change us if she came on tour too much.
These last few months Sofia and I have debated about her joining me on the Crybaby tour for a few dates, maybe do the run up the west coast with us. But in the end, she’s decided she doesn’t need to do that this time around. She’ll see the show in Vancouver when we finish the tour here. And there’s always next year. I’m sure she’ll come to other shows. She loves Crybaby and is excited to see her favourite song I Can’t Grow Up live. I’ve also been rehearsing 4-6 hours a day for weeks now in our apartment, so she joked she’s already seen the show a hundred times. The only thing she seems sad about is missing a chance to hang out with Sid on the tour bus.
In reality, the hardest part of just picking up and joining us is Georgia. Having a dog has changed a lot in our lives. Sofia and I love Georgia, but definitely feel weighed down a bit more than we did before we had her. Neither of us likes having to send her away when we travel.
A few people have asked why I don’t bring Georgia on tour. Hayley from Paramore told me she’s taking Alf on the first half of their current tour. Georgia’s a different kind of dog, I text back. She needs a lot of structure. But perhaps it’s that I need a lot of structure. And part of that structure is that I put work first on the road. Even before my health or happiness. At home, Sofia and Georgia often come first for me. Maybe part of me doesn’t want them on tour because I don’t know how to balance what’s most important to me at work. Clearly what’s most important to me is family. Friends. My health and well-being. But something changes when we tour. Being in a band, putting on a show every single night, doing VIP soundchecks and interviews and being singularly focused on work is kind of the gig. I’ve played with whooping cough and strep throat and sinus infections and food poisoning. I’ve stayed on the road through deaths in the family, breakups, extreme fatigue, and explosive unhappiness with you. I’m not saying it was right. But it’s what I’ve always done.
I’ve sacrificed everything to do this job. I’ve always thought that was expected of me. But maybe only I expect that of me? This is why I’m so intrigued by the choice – which I fully understand you making – to bring Stacy and Sid and our mom on the road this fall. You’ve got a full entourage coming out on the Crybaby tour and I can’t wait to see how you manage the balance of personal and work.
I wonder if it will change how I feel about the prospect of bringing Sofia and Georgia on tour next summer. Maybe I’ve been going about this all wrong, compartmentalizing work and life separately as opposed to blending them together.
Tegan
I've Been Going About This All Wrong